But as mesmerizing an expose as the book is, I doubt that this will be more than a speed bump to Scientology's growth and fund raising
From reports I've seen Scientology continues to grow in the sense of buying up property and growing its bank acount, but is not growing and even losing members. Lets not give this science fiction religion credit for anything it really isn't doing.
First let me say that I legitimately use Bit torrent and similar programs to download (and reshare) perfectly legal things like Knoppix and other open sores software. I have had to limit my use, being a victim of the AT&T monopoly I'm subject to the data caps even for my DSL land line, so no more leaving the torrent up for a month to help share new software after it is released.
I sure don't want my IP address associated in any way with crap like copies of the latest jar-jar movie from the hack who lied to us about Lost (illegal or legal copies). And I don't want my traffic to skyrocket to move that junk even when I didn't download it myself, just so some warez freaks can try to hide from the entertainment mafia. And if I chose to run software that knowingly routed such traffic through my computer, then I completely expect that the courts owned by the entertainment mafia would decide that I acted in collusion with the people who uploaded and downloaded the questionable files and that I was an accomplice.
Shame on Google if it is true. I pay my ISP for the traffic that I use (and with AT&T even my land line is capped). Google should have said "fine, we will not let your customers access our data" and then waited to see how the French ISPs paying customers reacted. After all, the users are going to use some form of search engine, it really doesn't affect the ISPs traffic if they use Google or Ask or Yahoo or the more evil bing. They just saw Google as a company who depends on providing a free service to the ISPs users to generate revenue and decided that they could bully them.
What a great thing it is that Microsoft is launching a program to let people say "give-me give-me give-me" when they build in a flood plane but don't want to bother to buy flood insurance. After all, they needed to money that they could have spent on flood insurance to pay for their fancy smart phone to run the app. And at least we will not be pestered by the truly needy, since they are the ones who don't have smartphones.
Don't forget bandwidth caps on wired Internet "services", such as that sold to you by the good people at AT&T. The little old lady next door already got hit with huge overages because she likes to watch netflix, I can imagine how bad the overages would be if I was playing a high resolution game for similar amounts each month. And I also don't believe that a "cloud based system" will ever be able to generate as good of quality of game video and then deliver it with as low of latency as a system co-located with the user.
The paper seems to be making the point that it is just dandy to have a gun if you're an armed mercenary looking for trouble, but it is a bad thing to have a gun if you just believe in your second amendment rights and want one to protect your home and family.
If people learn not to play Zynga games from this, it will be for the best. Maybe someone not yet victimized by this can learn from others' stupid mistakes.
Ever since HP bought Compaq (a deal that brought them nothing that they didn't already have) for more than the Chinese later paid for BM's PC division, they have been on a downhill spiral. And the cause of the decline seems to survive by telling the board "don't fire me now, you need to see this through". Meanwhile she keeps taking millions for an inability to run a once great company.
Keyless entry systems might be handy (although yet another security risk), but having a keyless system with no key backup is insane. Do these people also get their car towed when the keyless entry battery dies? Or if the car battery dies? I would never accept a system that didn't have some form of alternate entry and starting.
No one who cares about being able to run programs that they pay for would use this DRM system anyway. And anyone who believes that Steam never could or would cut them off from their purchases deserves this little foreshadowing of what will come of their DRMed purchases.
You might want to get a ham radio license, and even if you don't, visit the website of Amsat (http://www.amsat.org), a worldwide group that has put many satellites in orbit. You are welcome to join even without an amateur radio license.
existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources
No problem. When you get to your asteroid or whatever, you just declare yourself an independent space faring nation. You certainly have far more claim to that title than those who didn't get there. And you'll want to do that anyway, otherwise all of your profits will be taxed by the earthworms who think they are entitled to most of your profits and to tell you how to do things, even though they took mo risk and provided no service to you.
They've been getting a lot of bad press lately so I don't think that will scare them either..
No sympathy for you if you don't even name them. Sure, you might not shame them into anything by naming them here, but you might help others, and might get a response from someone who knows how to pressure them. As long as what you have to say about them is honest I don't know why you didn't name them.
I don't find the bucket brigade thing that interesting. And I have little sympathy for a company that chooses to put a data center in a flood plane (and in very expensive real estate at that). What I find interesting is that the data center apparently was able to keep a connection to the rest of the world. I would have expected the power outages and the flooding to disconnect it, even if it could power itself.
Don't worry, the guy that let the "earth shattering" leak get out had been dealt with. Which in government speak means that he was promoted, given a big fat raise, and now sits alone in an office all day and fears losing his income if he ever tells the truth about this. The perchlorate story is the story that people can handle, just as Roswell's weather balloons were last century. Nothing to see here, move on.
What if I know better than to put Win 8 on any of my systems? After all, like Win ME and Vista, Win 8 is already disgusting users and seems to be one of those releases that you would be wise to skip. Can I still get a next release if I don't but Win 8, or does the "upgrade" only apply to those who bought Win 8? If so it would be more honest to call it a paid service pack than an upgrade.
You find it a surprise that you build your profit model around users having problems and needing to contact you for the fix, and then being upset that you want to make a profit on giving out the fix? I don't. And I've seen too many companies who would gladly leave in some problems to help generate more "support revenue".
I'm not even convinced that you really want to take the high road here, but if you honestly do then I would suggest the following:
1) Make sure that your website has an extensive support section that lists all known problems and the resolution for all that are resolved.
2) Offer free support by email / web only on an as-available basis. And really do have staff spend some of their available free time responding to reported problems. Who knows, you might even learn some important things about problems in your products that you don't know and will not learn if you insist that customers pay you to tell you about your problems.
3) If you do 1 and 2 then go ahead and offer priority response phone support for a fee for those who feel the need for it.
The game I stick with Windows for is Unreal 2004, which I still play several times a week with a small group of friends. But the more important answer is that, while I've used Steam for some demos and freebies and an old copy of HalfLife that I was forced to use with Steam when I reinstalled it, I'll never buy a product with Steam DRM built in, so it really doesn't matter to me what games they support. I prefer to own the things I buy, not have use of them as long as some one else thinks is long enough. With so many businesses that have failed and so many people complaining (even here) about having lost something that they thought they had bought because of DRM, I'm amazed that so many supposedly knowledgeable people are still being suckered into the scam of DRM.
A good musician can create something resembling music with just about anything. I remember Steve Allen doing it with a picture of birds sitting on power lines. But claiming there are "energy patterns" in the mist random process in nature is just, purring it kindly, B.S.
If 15 minutes for a scan seems too impractical, Homeland Security has already announced a deal with the TSA that will allow you to order a nice anatomically correct figure of yourself the next time that you go through an airport.
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You're picking on me for my (deliberate) choice of words amounts to a hate crime. After all, I'm a senile citizen.
But as mesmerizing an expose as the book is, I doubt that this will be more than a speed bump to Scientology's growth and fund raising
From reports I've seen Scientology continues to grow in the sense of buying up property and growing its bank acount, but is not growing and even losing members. Lets not give this science fiction religion credit for anything it really isn't doing.
First let me say that I legitimately use Bit torrent and similar programs to download (and reshare) perfectly legal things like Knoppix and other open sores software. I have had to limit my use, being a victim of the AT&T monopoly I'm subject to the data caps even for my DSL land line, so no more leaving the torrent up for a month to help share new software after it is released.
I sure don't want my IP address associated in any way with crap like copies of the latest jar-jar movie from the hack who lied to us about Lost (illegal or legal copies). And I don't want my traffic to skyrocket to move that junk even when I didn't download it myself, just so some warez freaks can try to hide from the entertainment mafia. And if I chose to run software that knowingly routed such traffic through my computer, then I completely expect that the courts owned by the entertainment mafia would decide that I acted in collusion with the people who uploaded and downloaded the questionable files and that I was an accomplice.
Shame on Google if it is true. I pay my ISP for the traffic that I use (and with AT&T even my land line is capped). Google should have said "fine, we will not let your customers access our data" and then waited to see how the French ISPs paying customers reacted. After all, the users are going to use some form of search engine, it really doesn't affect the ISPs traffic if they use Google or Ask or Yahoo or the more evil bing. They just saw Google as a company who depends on providing a free service to the ISPs users to generate revenue and decided that they could bully them.
What a great thing it is that Microsoft is launching a program to let people say "give-me give-me give-me" when they build in a flood plane but don't want to bother to buy flood insurance. After all, they needed to money that they could have spent on flood insurance to pay for their fancy smart phone to run the app. And at least we will not be pestered by the truly needy, since they are the ones who don't have smartphones.
Don't forget bandwidth caps on wired Internet "services", such as that sold to you by the good people at AT&T. The little old lady next door already got hit with huge overages because she likes to watch netflix, I can imagine how bad the overages would be if I was playing a high resolution game for similar amounts each month. And I also don't believe that a "cloud based system" will ever be able to generate as good of quality of game video and then deliver it with as low of latency as a system co-located with the user.
The paper seems to be making the point that it is just dandy to have a gun if you're an armed mercenary looking for trouble, but it is a bad thing to have a gun if you just believe in your second amendment rights and want one to protect your home and family.
If people learn not to play Zynga games from this, it will be for the best. Maybe someone not yet victimized by this can learn from others' stupid mistakes.
Ever since HP bought Compaq (a deal that brought them nothing that they didn't already have) for more than the Chinese later paid for BM's PC division, they have been on a downhill spiral. And the cause of the decline seems to survive by telling the board "don't fire me now, you need to see this through". Meanwhile she keeps taking millions for an inability to run a once great company.
Keyless entry systems might be handy (although yet another security risk), but having a keyless system with no key backup is insane. Do these people also get their car towed when the keyless entry battery dies? Or if the car battery dies? I would never accept a system that didn't have some form of alternate entry and starting.
No one who cares about being able to run programs that they pay for would use this DRM system anyway. And anyone who believes that Steam never could or would cut them off from their purchases deserves this little foreshadowing of what will come of their DRMed purchases.
You might want to get a ham radio license, and even if you don't, visit the website of Amsat (http://www.amsat.org), a worldwide group that has put many satellites in orbit. You are welcome to join even without an amateur radio license.
That would certainly be fun: " We down here in this deep gravity well declare war on you people up there among all of those rocks! "
existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources
No problem. When you get to your asteroid or whatever, you just declare yourself an independent space faring nation. You certainly have far more claim to that title than those who didn't get there. And you'll want to do that anyway, otherwise all of your profits will be taxed by the earthworms who think they are entitled to most of your profits and to tell you how to do things, even though they took mo risk and provided no service to you.
They've been getting a lot of bad press lately so I don't think that will scare them either..
No sympathy for you if you don't even name them. Sure, you might not shame them into anything by naming them here, but you might help others, and might get a response from someone who knows how to pressure them. As long as what you have to say about them is honest I don't know why you didn't name them.
I don't find the bucket brigade thing that interesting. And I have little sympathy for a company that chooses to put a data center in a flood plane (and in very expensive real estate at that). What I find interesting is that the data center apparently was able to keep a connection to the rest of the world. I would have expected the power outages and the flooding to disconnect it, even if it could power itself.
Don't worry, the guy that let the "earth shattering" leak get out had been dealt with. Which in government speak means that he was promoted, given a big fat raise, and now sits alone in an office all day and fears losing his income if he ever tells the truth about this. The perchlorate story is the story that people can handle, just as Roswell's weather balloons were last century. Nothing to see here, move on.
What if I know better than to put Win 8 on any of my systems? After all, like Win ME and Vista, Win 8 is already disgusting users and seems to be one of those releases that you would be wise to skip. Can I still get a next release if I don't but Win 8, or does the "upgrade" only apply to those who bought Win 8? If so it would be more honest to call it a paid service pack than an upgrade.
travel into orbit from local airports (ideally, those close to the equator) will be possible
Shucks, none of my local airports seem to be near the equator. And I don't fly since the TSA started assaulting and irritating travelers.
You find it a surprise that you build your profit model around users having problems and needing to contact you for the fix, and then being upset that you want to make a profit on giving out the fix? I don't. And I've seen too many companies who would gladly leave in some problems to help generate more "support revenue".
I'm not even convinced that you really want to take the high road here, but if you honestly do then I would suggest the following:
1) Make sure that your website has an extensive support section that lists all known problems and the resolution for all that are resolved.
2) Offer free support by email / web only on an as-available basis. And really do have staff spend some of their available free time responding to reported problems. Who knows, you might even learn some important things about problems in your products that you don't know and will not learn if you insist that customers pay you to tell you about your problems.
3) If you do 1 and 2 then go ahead and offer priority response phone support for a fee for those who feel the need for it.
The truck driving dyke across the street and some of her "girl friends" nave a gripe about that TLD too.
The game I stick with Windows for is Unreal 2004, which I still play several times a week with a small group of friends. But the more important answer is that, while I've used Steam for some demos and freebies and an old copy of HalfLife that I was forced to use with Steam when I reinstalled it, I'll never buy a product with Steam DRM built in, so it really doesn't matter to me what games they support. I prefer to own the things I buy, not have use of them as long as some one else thinks is long enough. With so many businesses that have failed and so many people complaining (even here) about having lost something that they thought they had bought because of DRM, I'm amazed that so many supposedly knowledgeable people are still being suckered into the scam of DRM.
showing the energy patterns
A good musician can create something resembling music with just about anything. I remember Steve Allen doing it with a picture of birds sitting on power lines. But claiming there are "energy patterns" in the mist random process in nature is just, purring it kindly, B.S.
If 15 minutes for a scan seems too impractical, Homeland Security has already announced a deal with the TSA that will allow you to order a nice anatomically correct figure of yourself the next time that you go through an airport.
Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?
Get a job as an English teacher.